There are some issues and discourses that Stan Rogers returns to, or at least that's from multiple points of view. We have The Field Behind the Plow and Lies (the agricultural plight from the respective POVs of a husband and wife), The Idiot and Free in the Harbor (young men going west and the towns they leave behind) The Mary Ellen Carter and The Jeannie C (the woman boat I love is gone! What do I do?), and Bluenose and Man with Blue Dolphin (sister ships!). But the most interesting juxtaposition of songs in Stan Rogers' discography, I think, is Northwest Passage and its lesser-known counterpart Take it from Day to Day.
Northwest Passage is one of Stan's most famous songs, and deservedly so: with its rock-quaking harmonies, references to British-Canadian colonial history and meditation on the sublime purpose of Rogers' own career as a traveling musician, the work produces a sense of longing that would be epic if it weren't so futile. While Rogers is ambivalent-at-most about the colonialism inherent in his historical perspective (read: The House of Orange), his choice to focus on the psychological journeys of "the first men through this way" makes projects like the Franklin Expedition sound like exemplary iterations of a universal human journey—these explorers are Just Like You, and their longing for the Northwest Passage is the same, and so is their suffering, so the project itself doesn't sound like an act of colonial violence in Rogers' song. Even the choice to perform Northwest Passage a capella underscores (hehe) the sense of profound isolation that Rogers describes.
But Northwest Passage is a song about captains: men who recognized "the call" to leave their homes for the not-uninhabited Artic expanse and whose journeys make it into the history books. But Take it From Day to Day approaches the Northwest Passage from the opposite direction. Literally.
The song is from the perspective of a common sailor on the St. Roch, the first ship to travel the Northwest Passage west-to-east. And instead of of being overwhelmed by the natural beauty of the Artic or the symbolic resonance of the voyage, he's contemplates more prosaic themes: namely, how much he misses his lover.
It's a little silly to think, as Rogers belts out the chorus—"I'm as far North now as I want to come/but Larson's got us under his thumb/and I signed up for the whole damn run/I can't get off halfway!"—how disappointing this perspective on Artic voyages proves compared to the unfulfilled longing of Northwest Passage. Instead, the unfulfilled longing of the anonymous narrator makes Take if From Day to Day into one of Roger's most sexual songs. I beg you to listen to it, if only to count the sensual metaphors and double-entendres.
But whether you have heard Northwest Passage and love it, or you're interested in a more down-to-earth perspective on Ice, I think it's a song you might enjoy.
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